Chinese Troops in Russia?
Would China send its military-age men to safely die fighting for Russia?
If China’s economy truly faces problems and you could have a lot of unemployed young men sitting about with time to think of who is to blame for their plight. Would the Chinese Communist Party consider it better for them to earn money to send home by fighting for Russia in Ukraine? And if they die there, so much the better?
China’s dispatch of troops to march in Russia’s World War II parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany 80 years ago could be read as a subtle threat that China could follow North Korea’s example and dispatch a PLA Army expeditionary force to fight at Russia’s side:
Russian President Vladimir Putin led celebrations marking 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with a parade Friday in Moscow's Red Square of more than 11,000 troops, war-era T-34 tanks, light and heavy armored vehicles and advanced military hardware.
Putin was flanked by Chinese President Xi Jinping and 26 other world leaders who flew in specially to witness the proceedings, which featured a People's Liberation Army unit and 12 other contingents from former Soviet republics, non-aligned countries and communist Vietnam and Laos.
That may not be likely on a large scale, but a People’s Volunteer Army might be an option that secures the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at home:
The People's Volunteer Army (PVA), officially the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV),] was the armed expeditionary forces deployed by the People's Republic of China during the Korean War. Although all units in the PVA were actually transferred from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) under the orders of Chairman Mao Zedong, the PVA was separately constituted in order to prevent an official war with the United States.
It was Russia’s transparently flimsy “little green men” on a massive scale.
It’s possible that China will begin to worry more about Russia’s collapse and believe that is worse than intervening. Letting Russia recruit Chinese men might seem like a good option.
And if China’s rulers worry about domestic unrest for any number of reasons, the CCP may believe killing off potentially troublesome young men will kill two birds with one stone, as I speculated about North Korea sending troops to fight Ukraine for Russia.
So far, China has just dipped its toe in the water of intervention:
A former Western intelligence official told Reuters that approximately 200 Chinese soldiers are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Two current U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, confirm that there are more than a hundred of them.
Ukraine has said it captured two. A hundred or so is a far cry from North Korea’s 12,000+ expeditionary force (and Russia is opening up a new path for North Korean recruits). Even if China doesn’t think Russia is on the verge of defeat or doesn’t worry about its own internal unrest, could China think it can pull Russia away from North Korea by being more supportive as a source of manpower for Russia’s grinding assaults?
While reading a book (Antony Bevor, Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921, p. 232) about Russia’s civil war sparked by defeat in World War I, I ran across information I had not known:
Russian sources state that some 30,000-40,000 Chinese served in Bolshevik ranks during the civil war, yet the estimate of Chinese diplomats pointed to double that figure. Shen Chenho claimed the true number was close to 100,000. there were even some units formed entirely by ‘Chinese internationalists’. And by the height of the civil war, the Kiev Cheka had a purely Chinese ‘special detachment’ commanded by Li Xu-Liang. A number were recruited by the Cheka because they seemed to have no qualms about killing or torturing White prisoners when Russian personnel could not stomach any more blood.
So yeah, there’s even a history of Chinese mercenaries going to Russia to fight. And if we see that on a larger scale, it would be important to know why the Chinese Communist Party allowed or encouraged it.
NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.